


Vortexes

by lisachan



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 01:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: "Jace considers himself strong. He’s also stubborn and a real mule when he’s set upon a path he doesn’t wanna diverge from, but strength is a different matter – it has nothing to do with how many times you can hit your head against a wall before starting to feel any pain, that’s mere persistence, endurance, willpower, even, but certainly not strength."





	Vortexes

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write about them during the dimensional apartment affair <3  
> Written for this week's COW-T #8 Mission #2, prompt was "ocean".  
> I couldn't make things simple and just have them fuck at the beach, no, I had to go with the _metaphor_.

Jace considers himself strong. He’s also stubborn and a real mule when he’s set upon a path he doesn’t wanna diverge from, but strength is a different matter – it has nothing to do with how many times you can hit your head against a wall before starting to feel any pain, that’s mere persistence, endurance, willpower, even, but certainly not strength.

Strength is the ability to face something, anything, with a straight head and armed with rational thought. Strength is the ability to design plans and keep to them even in the most obscure and dreadful situations. Strength is also, though, being able to discard those plans and act upon instinct, and being able to face the consequences of those actions, when the plans you had initially came up with show themselves ineffective. And strength is, finally, the courage to face one’s own failures, and the ability to learn from them, to perfect oneself so that those mistakes don’t have to be repeated again.

With the power of Lilith’s mark, Sebastian took away all that.

He cannot face anything with a straight head anymore. Rational thought is nothing but a long lost memory, the ability to design plans has faded away into nothingness, let alone following them, even instinct is not a weapon to be used any longer, there’s no instinct, in him, no natural inclination, nothing – only him.

The rune feels like a voice constantly screaming Sebastian’s name in his head. It spares no space for nothing else. Jace wakes up in the morning thinking him – not even _of_ him, merely _him_ –, he sleepwalks through the rest of his day seeing him everywhere and then at night--

At night.

That’s when things get even messier.

“Jace.”

Sebastian calls his name and that’s enough for his mind to get all foggy already. He’s not in control of it – he’s in control of precisely nothing. He stands up and walks to the bedroom because he knows he’ll find him there – and he _is_ there, waiting.

On the doorstep, he takes a deep breath and then holds it in, and as he walks through the door he instantly feels as if he were underwater. There’s magic in this, there must be, he’s sure of it. It can’t be all in the rune, it can’t be all in the powerful hold Sebastian has on him. There must be something more, something mystical, something angelic in the twisted way. Something he’s not equipped to withstand, nor to escape.

Sebastian’s sitting on the edge of the bed and he doesn’t turn to look at him, even though Jace knows he knows he’s there. That’s just how he is, Jace thinks, and it’s infuriating: how he refuses to give you any attention until he’s sure he’s got all of yours. 

So he calls him. _Sebastian_. And having called each other’s names feels like having completed a ritual. There’s an invisible chain wrapped up around Sebastian’s wrist, and that chain ends in a collar locked up around Jace’s neck. It doesn’t suffocated him. Sebastian doesn’t need to tug at it. But it’s here. It keeps them connected. Tied up. Bound.

Finally, Sebastian looks at him too. Those dark black eyes are deep like the ocean and equally dangerous. There’s a tempest agitating them. And just like you can’t see the vortexes in the abyss at night, and you end up swimming right through them, down to your death, Jace feels compelled to walk towards him, drowning in him.

He stops right in front of him. Sebastian remains seated, he doesn’t move a muscle except for those of his neck, to follow him with his eyes. “Get down,” he says, “I hate to see you looking at me from above.”

There’s a deep knowledge telling Jace that in any other circumstance Sebastian would prefer to cut his own tongue than to admit something like this. He only speaks so freely because he knows Jace is under his spell – that he will never be able to use the weakness these words testify against him. 

Still, he is showing weakness. And Jace is unable to take advantage of it. Like his people – Clary – everyone else who believed in him once and might do it still would deserve.

He gets down, instead, on his knees. And looks up, searching for Sebastian’s eyes with his own.

“That’s better,” Sebastian reaches out for his face, stroking the outline of his jaw with his fingers. He does it roughly, pushing against his bones, careless if he scratches his skin. Jace shakes and tries to hide it as he feels the tide growing, ready to sweep over him. “Open your mouth,” Sebastian says, passing his thumb across Jace’s lips. He parts them, and the tip of Sebastian’s finger slips past them, and past his teeth, tapping into the wetness of his mouth.

Something wicked comes alight in Sebastian’s eyes. Jace knows it means trouble and he shivers again.

“Honestly, would you have thought you’d end up on your knees before me, sucking at my fingers, little brother?”

Jace doesn’t answer because speaking is pointless and he knows that. There is nothing he’s willing to say that will hurt or damage Sebastian in any way. His whole being has become incapable of harboring any resentment towards him. Everything is fear and confusion, and underneath that, underneath all that, there’s desire. Something he can’t run away from, and not just because they’re locked up together in an apartment traveling through space at the speed of magic.

The thrill is deeper than simple fear. It’s wider. Like the ocean, it overwhelms everything else, and once Jace disappears among the waves he knows he’s lost.

He closes his eyes and sucks, and he takes the little revenge he can take in feeling a shiver twin to his own run down Sebastian’s spine too. The connection works both ways – Sebastian knows when he’s aroused, he knows when he’s happy, he knows when he’s heartbroken, but so does Jace. It seems to him that he can comprehend him much better now that he can feel his emotions, because behind the ridiculous grandeur of his public speeches, between the lines of his show-off cruelty, Sebastian is a wavering light agitated by a multitude of furious emotions he cannot control. He’s anger, he’s desire to affirm himself, he’s pride and he’s a desperate need for violence, and on top of all of this, on top of everything else, Sebastian is hunger. Hunger for life. The life he’s always been denied – he wants to bite it now, he wants to tear it apart with demon teeth, he wants to swallow it and claim it for himself.

The same hunger echoes in Jace’s body, now. He emptied himself out to welcome it, or maybe the rune did, he doesn’t know and it’s not important at this point. Sebastian’s hungry – and he feels hungry too. He opens his eyes and he sees Sebastian looking at him dangerously, on the verge of doing something stupid. He could either kick him away and possibly break his head against a wall, or he could grab him and overthrow him on the bed.

He does the latter.

Jace suddenly finds himself face down against the pillow, his ass up in the air, one of his arms twisted behind his back, Sebastian’s fingers tightly closed around his wrist. “You do it on purpose, don’t you?” Sebastian growls against his ear, bent over him, pressing behind him, “You do it on purpose, looking at me with those eyes. As if you didn’t care about this. Even worse, as if you liked it.”

“I like it,” Jace says before he can stop himself, turning his face to escape from the smothering hold of the pillow.

Sebastian takes advantage of his movement to force him to turn his head even more, capturing his lips in a violent kiss. “Shut the fuck up,” he says, furious, “Shut your filthy whore mouth. This isn’t you. It’s the rune.”

And the worst part of it is that, really, Jace doesn’t even know anymore. Is it the rune, really?, or couldn’t it simply be that this is what he’s always truly wanted, right from the start? To get rid of the weight of responsibility, of goodness, to drawn, with blocks of concrete chained to his ankles, down the ocean of eternal damnation. To release, to finally look at someone else as if he were looking in the mirror, recognizing his own true face in someone else’s eyes.

He couldn’t with Clary – her eyes always demanded too much of him. That he be good, that he be the best, that he could save everyone and the world, that he was the hero she expected him to be, simply because her eyes is too pure to picture him in any other way.

But he can with Sebastian. Sebastian is evil, Sebastian is a demon – Sebastian can see him for what he really is, and he’s tired, he’s tired of fighting, of trying, of holding the weight of the universe and of a genealogy of heroes dating back to the first Jonathan on his own shoulders.

He wants that weight off. He wants all his weights off.

He frees his own arm and pushes down his pants, offering himself to Sebastian for the taking. Biting at his nape, like an animal, like the icy cold of the winter sea, Sebastian simply dives in.

*

They lie side by side after it’s over and there’s nothing but the distant echo of pain and pleasure mixing together and already starting to fade away between them. Jace is still lying on his stomach, Sebastian’s on his own back, staring at the ceiling.

“Back when I was a child I used to come spy on you,” he says in a whisper, his voice seemingly cold, concealing a vibration of barely held back anger, “I used to watch you and hate you and think that I wanted to kill you. Because you had everything. And I wanted what you had. So I thought by killing you I could take what was yours, and then I would be happy.”

The stickiness of sex, the way the warmth of their bodies linger on them is making Sebastian mellow, it’s making him want to talk. Jace wishes he would come closer. He doesn’t say it, though.

“Why didn’t you try?” he asks.

Sebastian seems to hold his breath for a second. “I was there when he killed the bird,” he simply says. Jace feels his heart skip a beat. Will the pain coming from that memory ever subside? Will it ever stop meaning what it means now, what it’s meant for his entire life? That love is pain, punishment, a curse you should never wish upon those you care for? “And I realized you had nothing. All I thought you had was nothing. You had nothing but yourself. So then I started to want you.”

Jace searches for his eyes. Sebastian refuses to allow him that contact and keeps staring at the ceiling, motionless.

“Now you have me,” he says. He tries to reach for him, but Sebastian moves away.

“No, I don’t,” he says.

Jace closes his eyes, because he doesn’t wanna watch him as he leaves the room.


End file.
